Medical, Immune System | featured news

Scientists have found a master regulator gene needed for the development of M cells, a mysterious type of intestinal cell involved in initiating immune responses.

Medical science efforts to harness the power of the immune system against cancer are beginning to bear fruit after decades of frustration, opening up a hopeful new front in the long battle against the disease.

It was thought that fetal immune cells were too immature to be useful and that fetuses and newborns relied on antibodies provided by their mothers. Now David Vermijlen at the Institute for Medical Immunology in Brussels, Belgium, and his colleagues have shown that fetuses just 21 weeks old may be capable of fending off infections using ...